


Silent Nights

by DJClawson



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abandon All Hope, Cancer, Coma, F/M, Gen, Hospitalization, Request Fill, Sad Ending, Secret Santa 2017, Ye Who Enter Here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 12:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8978878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: Foggy Nelson has gone on with his life, and so has Matt, until Foggy gets the call he never wanted but always knew was inevitable.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katbelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/gifts).



> Filling the request:
> 
> "Post-Season 2, Matt and Foggy never made up. Each moved on; years later, Foggy is a successful partner at a prestigious law firm, has a family, is Fully Accomplished. Matt is... still Matt, working in a dingy office at day and Daredeviling at night. They haven't spoken since the Castle fiasco.  
> And then one day Foggy gets a call from a hospital. It turns out that Matt's never taken his name off the emergency contact person list. They meet, for the first time in years, at the hospital. Cue talking between people who are now strangers to one another. Honesty because hey, the doctors here don't think Matt'll be leaving anyway so what's the harm. Possibly crying."
> 
> Thanks to Zelofheda for her very last-minute beta work.

Foggy Nelson did not want to be here.

Being back in Hell’s Kitchen was surreal. Now it was just another midtown neighborhood, with pricy rents and traffic. He’d been living on the Upper East Side for years, and his other family and friends with ties to the Kitchen had either fled or hunkered down. He was still in contact with Brett, of course, but mostly over Facebook, and Brett was a detective, which took him all over the city. He still lived in his old apartment because his mother owned it, though eventually he would probably give in and sell for a couple million and move out to Queens.

Being back at Metro General was even more surreal. Foggy had had the good fortune of not needing to visit a hospital for four years now, but it was all the same sights and smells and walls painted in colors designed by scientists to be soothing but just looked ugly and depressing. It was even worse in ICU, where everything was glass walls and plastic tubes and you could see everyone dying around you.

“Mr. Nelson,” Father Lantom said as he ushered him in. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“Yeah, well ...” They both knew he had no way to complete that phrase. He didn’t want to betray how badly he didn’t want to be here, or to have any reminder of that ugly period of his life. He absentmindedly noted that Karen wasn’t there, but only as a second of reprieve before he had to look at Matt.

There was so little of Matt in there, beneath all of the tubes and wires and sensors that blanketed his exposed skin. If he were awake, he would be tearing it all off in a fit. Or, that’s what Foggy knew he he would have been doing, years ago. He didn’t know much about Matt now.

Matt was handcuffed to the bed. Foggy was only admitted after Father Lantom talked to the guards and explained that Foggy had to be admitted; Foggy was the sole emergency contact on Matthew Murdock’s forms.

“We’re going to have some questions for you,” Brett said in the hallway on the way in; someone must have tipped him off to Foggy’s arrival because he definitely did not need to be there, so strategically placed. It wasn’t a threat; Brett knew better than to threaten a well-educated, expensive lawyer who knew his rights. He’d probably decided the gentle approach was better. Brett could make fun of Foggy all he wanted for getting beat up a lot as a kid, or the year he wore braces, but that didn’t mean he could drag him into a police station without filing charges.

Foggy didn’t fight him. “Yeah, okay.” He didn’t bother to say he hadn’t seen Matt in years. He did not offer any free information to the police. He was not an idiot.

Though now that he was staring at Matt, who was breathing through a tube, he felt like an idiot for not knowing what was going on. He just sank into the seat next to the bed. “Hey, Matt.” His throat was dry. “I would say it’s good to see you but ...” But he had no way to finish that sentence, either.

The doctor came in and was brutal but thorough in his assessment. Multiple impact sites. Broken ribs, bones, and Matt’s left knee was shattered. But the most significant injuries were to the head.

Foggy didn’t want the details, but he also didn’t want the details down the line, in pieces. He wanted to tear off that bandaid. “How much brain damage are we talking about here?”

“’Catastrophic’ is the word we would use,” the doctor said. “Frankly, we’re not sure how he’s alive now. He’s on life support.”

“For how long?”

The doctor bit his lip and said, “We don’t have a timeline for that yet.”

Foggy didn’t care about the details of how it had happened. He didn’t care which supervillain or low-level gangbanger Daredevil had been fighting. He didn’t care if he had been trying to save the world or just take another drug dealer off the streets. Foggy just focused on the word.

Everything about Matt, since the first day that Foggy had broken into Matt’s apartment and had seen him in the black suit, was catastrophic. This part was just _inevitable_.

“I know the police are going to want to question him,” Foggy said. “Put it on the chart that they have to go through his lawyer. He’s being represented by Hogarth, Nelson, and Sharpe.”

“I’ll make a note, but you have to tell the police yourself.”

Foggy nodded. He had nothing to add.

**********************

The police did end up requesting an audience with Foggy. He called the Bulletin, got Karen’s current number, and offered his services as her lawyer, but recommended Hogarth. Too many conflicts of interest.

She took Jeri’s personal number from him and that was the end of it. Apparently she didn’t want to get together and gab about the old days, either. She did come to the hospital, and cried and cried and cried, and got nonspecific answers from the doctors about Matt’s prognosis.

Foggy requested the meeting with the police to be in one of the family counseling rooms at the hospital, not the station. Neutral territory. He lied, of course, about knowing Matt was Daredevil. He didn’t lie about not having seen Matt in years, or about having any contact with him, or why their firm disbanded. “He became too unreliable for us to be partners,” he explained. “Now I see why.” He thought he was pretty convincing, but he also knew that their evidence on him was circumstantial at best. They were snooping around, trying to figure out if Matt was the only Daredevil, because any defense attorney worth their weight in salt would cast doubt on that. New York was filled with people in concealing costumes. You could buy imitation suits online for cosplay. Maybe this was Matt’s first time out. After all, he was blind.

The state hadn’t filed charges yet. It would be a complicated case, and a significantly different one if Matt were conscious, which he wasn’t. Since he couldn’t face his accusers, he couldn’t be formally charged or brought to trial until he was conscious and assessed as competent enough to stand trial.

In other words, he might never go to trial.

**********************

Foggy checked Father Lantom’s schedule and caught him on his Friday rotation. “We need to talk.” He was almost crying already, and he really didn’t want to.

Father Lantom folded his arms, but he knew precisely what Foggy was asking. “Do you have his Power of Attorney?”

“No.”

“Does anyone?”

“If there was anyone, it would be me.” But there was no one. Matt had not authorized anyone to make medical decisions for him. It wasn’t the kind of thing he would do, even with the probabilities that his lifestyle would lead them into this situation.

“And he has no living relatives?”

“His mom left when he was an infant. He tried to find her, but he never succeeded.”

“The state will have to try,” Lantom said. “Did he ever mention a living will?”

“Did Matt seem like the kind of guy who thought ahead?” Jesus, they were already talking in the past tense, and Matt was right there. “I’ll have to try to get access to his safe deposit box, if he has one.” At least Matt had known about the importance of keeping his paperwork in order and in a safe place; it came with being an orphan. “Look, you know why I’m asking.”

Lantom sighed, but his voice was still comforting. This was his element. “The Church does sometimes permit the removal of certain life-preserving devices, but only if the patient is determined to be suffering and has no chance of recovery. The doctors need a very clear picture and we don’t have that yet.”

“And I think Matt would want to do the Catholic thing,” Foggy said. “Or, I don’t know. He did dress up like the devil and beat the shit out of people. Allegedly. The Church has to have a stance on that.”

Lantom smiled sadly and looked at Matt. “He’s a complicated person.”

**********************

Foggy wanted to hire Jessica to find Matt’s mother, but she offered to do it for free. “He’s saved my ass enough times.”

It took her nearly a week, but she found Grace Murdock, mother of Matthew Murdock and wife of Jonathan Murdock, at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn, where she was buried under the name Sister Margaret.

“She was a nun,” Jessica told Matt, though he wasn’t a very active participant in their conversation. “She took Holy Orders the year after she left your father. When your father died, she went to court and declared herself an unfit mother, and that’s why you ended up in an orphanage. Died in 2008. Sorry, Matt.” She left the paperwork on the tray next to the gift basket from Karen. “You’re better off in Foggy’s hands anyway. At least he bothered to know you.”

“Hey,” Foggy said, mustering what little sympathy he could for Matt’s mother.

Jessica just rolled her eyes. “I’m not the sentimental type.” But the way that she looked at Matt told Foggy otherwise.

**********************

Foggy called the Avengers, and was not surprised to learn that Matt had friends there. They sent a specialist to run her own scans and monitor Matt’s brain activity. “Inconclusive.”

“What the hell does that mean?” He expected better from a doctor who treated Earth’s heroes or whatever they were called.

“Mr. Murdock had a different timeline of brain development after the accident,” she explained very politely and patiently. “His visual cortex, which should have atrophied, remained in use, but not for sight. There were different developments in other areas as well. It’s hard to map an abnormal brain. And then you have the years of concussions and other trauma, which are cumulative.” She closed the file. “In other words, it’s hard to get a clear picture of what use of his brain he might still have.”

“If we take him off life support – “

“I agree with the hospital’s assessment. At this point, that would not be a wise move. But that picture may change.”

The hope that burst in his heart hurt. “You mean he could wake up?”

She was weighing what to say. Foggy could see it in her eyes. He was familiar with this expression now, more than he ever wanted to be. “I can’t promise anything. I would say that if he didn’t already have a surprising medical history, there wouldn’t be any significant likelihood of recovery. But he is not an ordinary person.” She added, “With your permission, I will continue to monitor his case. Mr. Stark has offered to pay the costs.”

“Yeah, um, great,” Foggy said. His stomach was churning from all the conflicting information. “Let Mister, uh, Stark know that I appreciate it. And Matt appreciates it.” He held Matt’s hand. It was so cold.

“I’ll pass it along,” she said, and Foggy was grateful that he wasn’t going to have to meet with Tony Stark. He couldn’t stand all of that energy and celebrity right now.

He was exhausted.

**********************

Foggy was a lawyer; it was not hard to put the paperwork through to become Matt’s Power of Attorney, since Matt had no relatives to challenge that authority. It took time, and court visits, and record searches, but after three months he felt he more or less had Matt’s estate together. Despite his shoddy law practice, Matt had several million dollars, all transferred from some account from a shell corporation. It took a surprising amount of effort to figure out that it was Elektra’s money, though the transfer date (immediately after her death) helped. She’d left him everything, and from what Foggy could tell, he hadn’t spent it. Matt’s other finances became less surprising after that – he had a mortgage he was paying off on his corner apartment, the office bills were always paid on time, and he took cases that were almost always pro bono. Foggy delayed visiting the office as long as possible, to find the massive shrine outside the door with candles and flower and testaments from people whose lives had been saved by either Matt Murdock or Daredevil. The mailbox was stuffed with Get Well cards from clients. He couldn’t get in the door before clearing away all of the delivery baskets of now-dead flowers.

The press did their dance with him, trying to learn more about Daredevil’s past, but after Foggy said “no comment” in a cold tone enough times, they backed off, and focused on his superhero friends instead. Danny Rand and Jessica Jones had a lot to say about him, which annoyed Jeri, who was always trying to get her clients to _not_ admit to vigilante activities in interviews. Luke Cage said whatever he wanted to say all the time, more or less, and he told some great (and gruesome) stories about working with Daredevil, something Foggy didn’t even know he’d done.

He didn’t know where Claire was, but she found him by calling his office enough times to get through. She met him at the hospital. Matt was still in ICU while his other injuries healed, and he’d been through two more surgeries for his knee and would require more, but when they were done he would be moved to a long-term care unit. They said it would be quieter, and Foggy felt he could get some of the police restrictions on visitors lifted.

Claire wanted to be alone with Matt. She said she needed five, but she took twenty, and Foggy was certainly going to be the last person to charge in on her and her time with Matt.

They went over the prognosis again, mechanically, because Claire could get more from Foggy than from charts at this point, though she did look at them, hospital policy be damned.

“I told him to be careful,” she said. “He didn’t listen.”

“He never does,” Foggy said.

She agreed with the prognosis. It was grim, but more data was needed to determine how much of a vegetable he was. She used other terms, but Foggy understood just fine.

**********************

After six months, they moved Matt to long-term care. Foggy now had all paperwork he needed to meet with the doctors and hospital administrators so they could ask questions about intent. If he wanted to pull the plugs, he could do it. Legally speaking, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea. But Matt wasn’t suffering, and Matt wasn’t dying.

Father Lantom said, “I would wait.”

Foggy did.

**********************

“It’s just crazy, you know?” Foggy said to Matt. “I’m looking at color swatches for napkins. What the hell do I know about napkin colors?” He glanced at Matt, who was now minimally tubed. Sometimes, Foggy could just pretend he was sleeping. With oxygen support. “You were always a better dresser than me. Though I am better at colors. No offense, Matt.”

Matt didn’t have any opinions on what napkins the wedding reception hall could use, but he was a good listener, and Foggy was glad not to have someone offering their uninformed opinion or shouting in his ear.

“We did hire a wedding planner, but I think she’s somehow making it worse,” Foggy admitted. “What happened to the good old days when future mother-in-laws did all this and you were just told what to wear and where to stand? I’m all for that. I just want to stand there and get married.” He sighed. “I don’t sound too passive, do I? It’s just that there’s no romance in napkin swatches. Right?”

He felt that Matt agreed.

**********************

Foggy’s children were born at Mount Sinai, not Metro General. Twins, a girl and a boy. He wanted to name the boy after Matt, but since Matt was still alive ... his wife Debbie was superstitious about it. Parenthood set back his visitation schedule, and he missed the first month since Matt’s admission to long-term care.

“I brought pictures. I know, dumb, but my 3-D printer is clogged up again. They don’t tell you how fast that package of glue dries up.” He taped the pictures to the tray. “They’re cute. Daniel’s head is a bit bigger than Sarah’s. That’s how you would probably tell them apart. They’re both blonds, but that might change as they get older. Debbie’s hair is black, so the odds are against them.” Debbie was introduced to Matt – he was Daredevil, so she was curious – but she didn’t come back. Not that it was a very interesting trip. Sometimes Foggy would bring a plant to make the room less dismal, but the nurses never remembered to water it properly, so he finally settled on scented plastic, even though Matt would probably hate the chemical scents. He put it on the far end of the room, and it made things more cheery.

At Christmas he tried to bring a mini pine tree, but one of the nurses was allergic, or some other bullshit, and he had to take it out.

Matt was never the type for personal effects, and some of his stuff had been taken as evidence by the police, but Foggy did what he could. The tray next to the bed contained Matt’s golden cross necklace (the nurses didn’t want it getting caught up in the tubes), his talking alarm clock (even if it wasn’t used), and a framed picture of his father from the boxing gear part of the secret trunk. Letters from clients and fans were taped to the wall. Someone had even sent him a cosplay version of the Daredevil helmet, which sat on the windowsill. Father Lantom left a rosary on the tray that he put in Matt’s hands during visits.

Foggy still found it ironic that they gave Matt the room with the good view.

**********************

“Okay, so, you probably already know this,” Foggy said. He knew he wasn’t Matt’s only visitor other than Lantom. There were other names on the list, though most of them were Jane or John Doe, to avoid the media. “And the doctor said not to say anything distressing, but if you don’t know this, you deserve to know – Castle killed off the last of the Hand.”

It was an impressive feat. They kept replacing their numbers, no matter how many the Punisher took out in an act of vengeance for what they did to Matt, so he went to Japan to find their hideout.

“I know it wasn’t what you would have wanted. Obviously the Punisher didn’t ask my opinion on this,” Foggy said, holding Matt’s hand. “But he did it. Turns out they were actually run by some kind of demon called the Beast, and Castle had to get Dr. Strange to help him get to another dimension where bullets would harm it. And then he shot it in the face. And everywhere else. Until it was dead. He killed a demon in another dimension for you. He didn’t try to hide the information, either. I guess he’s not expecting anyone from the demon dimension to press charges.”

He wasn’t in any kind of formal contact with Castle, never had been, not since the trial. The Punisher stayed off everyone’s radar. He was still a wanted man for his ever-growing body count, and the Avengers officially had nothing to do with him and unofficially still had more or less nothing to do with him, but if he showed up and helped them in a fight, they didn’t turn him in, usually because he threated to shoot them if they did, though Foggy suspected that was more of a show for them, to provide some legal cover for the “good guys.” Frank Castle was not a “good guy” and never tried to be, and no one made the mistake of thinking that he was, however many sympathetic columns Karen wrote about him.

Foggy decided not to add that he’d killed Elektra, too. Or the resurrected, soulless Elektra, the one who had stabbed Matt while her ninja goons dropped a cinder block on his head.

**********************

Foggy didn’t mean to get chummy with the Avengers, but come on, they were the Avengers, and he knew people who knew people. Luke Cage was briefly an Avenger, and he invited like half of them to his wedding to Jessica, which Foggy attended. All of them asked about Matt, and all of them had good things to say about him, but only as Daredevil. Foggy wondered if any of them had really known him outside of the ones who lived in Hell’s Kitchen. If they did, they said nothing. Black Widow didn’t speak to him, but he knew that she was one of the Jane Does who visited, much more frequently than the others, by her handwriting and a hint from Jessica.

She was the one person who really didn’t want to talk about Matt. Foggy obliged her.

Dr. Strange was some kind of wizard, like the Harry Potter type, but before that he had been a world-class neurosurgeon, and when Foggy learned this he kicked himself for not having found out before. So he cornered Dr. Strange next to the coat check.

“I can’t perform surgery anymore,” Strange said, holding up hands that Foggy now noticed were shaking. “Nerve damage. It’s why I got into my current pursuits, actually. I had to find something new to do with my life. But yes, I did look at Matthew’s MRI. Not the most ethical thing I’ve ever done, I’m afraid, but Dr. Cho asked.” He frowned. “Obviously if I had something to add I would have added it. I agreed with her assessment.”

“And you can’t – “ He made a gesture like he had a wand. “Your spiritual woo-woo?”

“That’s not what I would call it,” Strange said, putting up with it for the moment. “Looking inside someone’s mind is ... personal. Complicated. It’s a violation of their privacy. And it can have consequences.”

“What kind of consequences?” Foggy demanded. “And be very specific.”

He was rude about it, but Foggy managed to convince Dr. Strange to visit Matt.

“You want to know if there’s brain activity,” Strange said. He was, after all, a doctor despite his ridiculous costume, that rivaled Matt’s. By a lot. “The mystical picture is much more complicated than the medical one. And not in terms I can describe.”

“Can you – I don’t know, take me in?”

“No,” Strange said, very firmly. “And you would regret going.” But he made his little weird graph thing in the air, this one purple, and it lowered so it fell on Matt’s head like a crown, and Dr. Strange froze like a mannequin, and remained that way for twenty awkward minutes, to the point where Foggy wondered if he had time to run to the bathroom, or if that would disturb it somehow.

And then Dr. Strange snapped back, like reality coming back from being unstuck.

“So?” Foggy said.

Dr. Strange was hard to read. “Like I said, it’s complicated. Ask what you want to ask and I’ll try to answer.”

“Does he hear us?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t. It just means he doesn’t hear us in the conventional way. Normally you speak, his ears pick it up, and his brain processes it. He might still be receiving input, but there’s no way to measure a response.”

“Is he in any pain?”

“No.” Strange looked relieved to be able to say that, and so confidently. “He is quite unaware of his position or any injuries he might have suffered. He is in a realm beyond physical pain.”

“Does he have any awareness whatsoever?”

“Every living thing has some,” Strange said. “But he’s not making new memories in the normative sense. Again, his brain is still receiving input but it’s not processing it. It doesn’t mean it never will. The human spirit is unbound by time. But he is bound to his body, which has limitations.”

Foggy knew the answer to the next question. “Is there any chance of him getting better?”

“Even if there was significant advances in neuroscience – which in our lifetime, there very well could be – it is unlikely that he has enough functioning brain matter left to work.”

“The doctors aren’t sure.”

“Doctors like being nice to the patient’s family,” Strange said. “Mostly to avoid all the crying that follows. And then there’s a bit of covering against a malpractice suit. Messy medical politics and all that.” He paused, then his face sort of flipped back into a more understanding, comforting expression. “The best way I can describe it is he’s sleeping. A very peaceful, dreamless sleep after a long, hard day.”

He didn’t say it, but to Foggy, it sounded like death.

**********************

“I knew I would find you here,” Marci said, after a tentative knock on the door to alert Foggy to her presence. She looked at Matt, but didn’t address him. “Wow. He’s greying.”

“Yeah, I told him,” Foggy said, though Matt’s aging in silence was not the topic he was obsessed with today. It was not why he came to talk to Matt alone. His reasons were much more selfish. “Why are you here?”

“I told you. Because I know you, Franklin Percy Nelson,” she said, leaning against the wall. “I’m here to offer my help.” When Foggy looked at Matt, she said, “No, how could I do that? I mean with the divorce.”

“You don’t have to.” He knew that Debbie and Marci were friends. “It’s my fault. I didn’t pay enough attention to her.”

“Bullshit. You pay attention to the people you care about,” she said. “Anyway, it’s not about that.”

“Then what’s it about?” Because he honestly wasn’t expecting this offer from Marci.

“She tainted the lawyer pool against you, which is some bullshit,” Marci explained. “Look, I don’t care why you’re getting divorced. I don’t want to get into the nasty details if I don’t have to. I would rather have avoided this whole thing. But you made me Rose’s godmother,” she said, referring to their third child. “And Debbie wants full custody.”

“She does.”

“You’re better with them. You’re a caring nurturer and all that shit. So the two of you, you can fight it out, but if you want custody, I’ll go to the mat for you. Well, not for you. For the kids.”

“ ... I don’t know what to say.” It was the first good news of the week. Of the month. Maybe of the year (it was early in the year) “Thank you.”

Marci finally really looked at Matt, and said to him, “You probably would have stalked her into an alley and beaten the shit out of her.”

“ _Marci_.”

“And it would have saved you a lot of money. Don’t think I’m doing this for charity,” she explained. “But someone has to have your back. It’s not Matt, so it’s me.”

“Really. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Easy. You’ll be buying me a new kitchen by the time this is over.” She looked back at Matt. “It’s a dignified grey. You’re in a hospital gown and unconscious and you’re still a lady killer. What’s with that?”

“Yeah,” Foggy said. “Some people have all the luck.”

**********************

“You said you trained him as a therapy dog!”

“I say lots of things,” Deadpool said. “I wouldn’t put money on any of them.”

After Foggy lost his dog in a poker game to Deadpool, he did convince him to bring the newly-renamed “Deuce the Devil Dog” by the hospital, but only after they convinced the staff that it would be therapeutic. Deuce was huge, and jumped everywhere, knocking over all kinds of knick-knacks and immediately finding Foggy’s snack box. He swallowed a granola bar whole, packaging and all.

“That’s gonna be a rough one.”

“You’re gonna kill my dog.”

“Uh, he is my dog, Hockey Puck, fair and square. And he’s swallowed worse. Though we might have to take a little visit to the vet right after this, won’t we? A little poochy-poo?” To Deadpool’s credit, Deuce did seem to like jumping on him (Deuce liked jumping on everybody) and licking his face (same), or licking the mask. “Now go spread your germs on a guy who hasn’t been outside in a decade.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Foggy said, then realized it had.

**********************

Captain America didn’t age. It had to do with the serum, of course – it perfected his body to the point that instead of a new body growing new, slightly different cells, it just grew the same ones, over and over again. It made him an enduring symbol of America and the fight for freedom, and all of that, but Foggy knew that Steve Rogers felt differently. It set him apart from other people even further. He’d seen one generation wither and die; he didn’t want to do it again.

That was why, when they ran into each other in the hallway, Foggy discovered he could talk to Steve about things he couldn’t talk to other people about. Steve had also taken a big sleep. Steve had also been given up for dead when he was alive. But Steve was different; he was a supersoldier. Matt had just had some chemicals splashed in his eyes, and he was aging, while the world went on without him. But at least Steve Rogers might be there.

“You know I was never legally declared dead?” Steve said. “So when I woke up, I had a lot of back-pay stored up. That was crazy money to me. Still kind of is. Just because people didn’t want to believe I was dead when I practically was.”

“I know you said in interviews that you didn’t but ... did you dream?”

“I do remember freezing to death. Or what I thought was death,” Steve said. “I don’t tell that part. It’s gruesome. It wasn’t like passing out or going to sleep. I went in the ice but I woke up a couple hours later, but it was too late to move. I don’t know how long it took for my brain to shut down again, but I can tell you, it was too long. However I go out – if I do go out – I don’t want it to be slow.”

Foggy gulped. “I don’t ...” But he needed to say it to someone, and there didn’t seem to be a better person. “I don’t have the courage.”

Steve just nodded. He was so understanding and Foggy was grateful for that. “I don’t give up on anybody, ever,” Steve explained. “Even when people gave up on me. But that doesn’t mean I could always save them. Old age, war injuries, fighting some monster from another dimension ... doesn’t matter, really, how it happens. Just that it does.”

**********************

When the long-term care center called Foggy to say they were sending Matt to hospital, he managed not to get his hopes up too hard before calling them back and finding out it was because Matt had had a seizure. It hadn’t woken him (no luck there) but they’d intubated him, stuffed him full of anti-seizure medication, and scheduled a PET scan for the next morning, first on the list.

Foggy was in the Bahamas at the time. It was time with his kids and they were getting older, so he was glad it happened near the end of the trip, so he didn’t have to cut anything short for them. But he was distracted the final day.

“So you used to be in business with this guy?” Danny asked him. “And he turned out to be a superhero?”

“A vigilante, and it was more complicated than that.” He was a little short with him, and he felt bad about it. They all knew about Matt, had seen him once when they were young, but they had busy lives and Matt was probably just sort of part of the furniture. “Sorry, I’m just the person the hospital contacts so it’s a lot of responsibility.”

“Are we related to him?”

“No. Matt doesn’t have any family,” he told his son. “But he was _like_ family to me.”

Foggy got the news on the plane, but they said to wait to react until he heard back from the tumor board, because they needed a whole _board_ to make a call on brain tumors. Only one of them actually met with him, a young new doctor who looked intelligent enough. They spoke in the family meeting room, not in Matt’s ICU unit, which was a bad sign unto itself.

“The good news is the tumors are restricted to the brain, which means they haven’t spread from somewhere else,” she said. She was a little nervous. Maybe she wasn’t as used to giving this level of news. “Our initial diagnosis is either lymphoma or glioblastoma, but we would need a biopsy to identify the type of tumor.”

“Is that ... literally brain surgery?”

“Yes, we would have to make an incision in his skull,” she said. “However, the board doesn’t feel confident that it could be done with a good window for not causing further damage, especially since it won’t affect the course of treatment.”

“Why? Do you treat cancers the same?”

The doctor paused. Again, bad sign. “So primary treatment for brain tumors is vaccine therapy or surgery, but for the vaccination we need a responsive patient to administer it, and he’s not a surgical candidate because there are too many sites. We also feel that his body would not be able to handle much chemotherapy or radiation, which would be palliative.”

“To buy time.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what we would be doing. We would be buying time,” Foggy said, uninterested in drawing this conversation out. “Time to get his things in order – if he were awake.”

“Again, his body isn’t really in the kind of shape needed to withstand these treatments. Radiation could slow tumor growth but he’s already on life support.”

“What can you do?”

“We can probably control or stop the seizures with medication.” She lapsed into silence, because there was no more, and Foggy had to process that.

“...How long?”

“A few months. If he continues to have seizures, maybe less.”

“Is he suffering?”

“His body has undergone a lot of trauma in the last few days, but we can’t tell if he’s registering it.”

“So, maybe.”

“I would say it’s unlikely,” she offered. “Considering his condition.”

“Okay.” That was all he could say. “Okay. I um, need to see a priest.”

**********************

Foggy did not know the new priest. It was a different one from the guy at the long-term care center who had replaced Lantom when he’d passed away. They all seemed the same to Foggy. His focus was on Matt, who looked wrecked. Even with intubation, he sounded like he was gasping for air, his hair was oily from dried sweat, and his fingertips were blue. Compared to almost no change in two decades, it was a lot to take in. Foggy was sponging Matt’s forehead down when Father Decker entered. He spoke in hushed tones, as if it weren’t solemn enough, as they discussed the options.

“I have to consult my superior but my initial sense is that the Church would not discourage discontinuing treatment.”

There were so many negatives to avoid saying something active, but that was exactly why they were used. Foggy didn’t criticize him. “Then do that.”

He didn’t have that many people to tell. It was all over text, since he didn’t want to have to say. He didn’t ask his kids to come. He didn’t want them present for this, though Rose, who was always mature for her age, did offer. Marci called him back and spoke to him, but she was at a conference in London, and she told him not to wait. Not to make Matt suffer. He told the medical team for the Avengers, and Brett, and a few other people. And then he texted Natasha Romanov.

**********************

She gave no official response to the text, but she was there in two hours. “How did you know?”

“You’re the only one who’s never talked about Matt, ever,” he said. “And he was always a ladies man.”

“Yeah, he sure was.” Natasha smiled. “We were, well, engaged to be engaged.”

“Shit. I had no idea – “

“Because I didn’t tell anyone,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, either. I was in shock. You – you seemed like a better caretaker. I knew you would do the right thing.” She looked at Matt. “I’ve already made too many decisions about who lives and who dies. They weren’t always the right ones. Matt deserved better.”

“Did you know the Hand was coming for him?”

“He always went to the Hand,” she said. “It went back and forth a lot with them. They stepped into the city and he had a problem with it. Even when they brought Elektra back, he didn’t go easy on them. I think he was the only one who really understood what he was fighting before Frank Castle and Steven Strange figured it out.”

“Did you guys – what kind of arrangement did you have?” If there was ever a time to ask, it was now.

“He wanted to get engaged. I said I wasn’t ready. Which was true,” she said. “He was a bit of a romantic. Gave me a really hard sell. That’s why we got as far as we did.”

Foggy knew about Matt’s final years from the other Avengers. He’d collected that information surreptitiously, keeping it all on his computer, reviewing it sometimes. He probably had the best record of what Matt Murdock was like, even when they weren’t speaking anymore. A long set of oral histories, as many as he could gather.

He’d never felt like asking Natasha. He’d never had to ask; it would come out if people wanted to tell him, like Foggy was a living guestbook they could write their names into.

Natasha just said. “I want to be here.”

“For Matt.”

“No,” she replied. “For you.”

**********************

It was all so easy, and it made Foggy feel horrible.

The doctor came by in the morning. They ran some final scans before Foggy presented his paperwork and gave the go-ahead, but only after they’d removed the breathing tube, because Foggy didn’t want Matt to die choking on plastic, and the priest wanted to give Matt the Host, even if he couldn’t swallow the wafer. There wasn’t a noise at all, like a click, and they didn’t go and pull the plug from the wall, like he’d always imagined they would. They just shut down certain machines and pulled a tube, but left the diagnostics in place.

Without all the gear over his mouth, Matt looked more peaceful than he had in years. His breathing was a little ragged at first, when it was still audible.

He would have hated it, all of it. He would have hated being in the hospital, with the sounds and smells. He would have hated not being in control of his own body, not having any autonomy, not having any say in the matter. He would have hated every tiny indignity, the real ones and the ones he might have made up.

But Dr. Strange had said, essentially, _No new memories_. So Matt wouldn’t know about any of it. He wouldn’t know about the visitors over the years, the changes to his own body as he aged, the seizures, and now he didn’t know he was dying and Foggy and Natasha were watching it happen.

Foggy was looking so hard at Matt through tears that he missed the dropping blood pressure. The long beep wasn’t even that loud. It could have not registered. That’s how quiet it all was.

“I’m sorry,” Foggy said, not sure what he was apologizing for, as he held Matt’s as it grew cold.

The End


End file.
